...pretty much nobody seriously thinks that anybody is ahead by a comfortable margin in the Massachusetts governor's race.

Second: Every independent poll since Labor Day -- check that, since June -- has shown Deval Patrick leading with margins ranging from 1 percentage point (Globe/UNH) to 7, as in the Suffolk University poll that came out earlier this week.

John Hawkins, who runs RightWingNews and has a column at Townhall.com, and is just a rung below RedState/CNN's Erick Erickson on the conservative blogosphere heirarchy of influence, wrote last week about the "Year of the Republican Woman." As my regular readers know, I am, let's say skeptical about that, but hey we'll know Tuesday night.

With rumors of a Suffolk University poll on the way, the Charlie Baker campaign has released another memo on its own magical, unseen internal polling. Now, I don't know where this race really stands, but this memo reeks of a campaign in its death throes.

The 'topline' numbers, for the record, are a 40%-40% tie, with Cahill at 10%, Stein 3%, and 6% undecided.

OK, let's start here: Charlie Baker is absolutely correct that Deval Patrick has refused to talk seriously about how he'll deal with the looming FY2012 budget gap, likely to be in the range of $2 billion. And Patrick deserves to be called out for that.

And, if Patrick's going to leave that question unanswered, it's political fair game for Baker to lob speculative grenades to scare voters about what Patrick might do.

Monday night, during the final televised debate, Governor Deval Patrick used a discussion about unemployment to talk about a "job club" he visited with that meets in a Quincy IHOP. This was not new; it has become a standard part of his campaign rhetoric in the past month -- he even spoke at length about that Quincy group in his speech at the big GOTV rally with President Barack Obama.

...what
has he ever done that makes him more qualified for office than any Joe Schmoe in
the neighborhood with conservative opinions? As best as I can tell, he's had a
string of start-and-stop careers, of which I've never heard a single positive
story, and then he's been a do-nothing state representative.

Every time you think that Massachusetts Republican Party has hit its lowest possible ebb, they surprise you by falling even further.

This is especially true in the state senate. At the end of the 1990s the GOP caucus was down to 7 (from a high of 16 after the 1990 election), which seemed like surely the bottom -- but no, they dropped to 6 in the 2000 election.

For a long time now, whenever I'm asked who I think will win the Massachusetts Governor's race, I've said the same thing: I think Deval Patrick -- to my surprise -- has a slight advantage, with perhaps a 55% chance of winning.

Today, with the new Boston Globe/UNH poll, I am -- to my further surprise -- recalbrating that analysis.

--Bill Keating's campaign, and supporters, need to be careful not to overplay their hand with the Jeff Perry scandal; they don't want to give an opening for Perry to paint himself as the victim of a concentrated attack by the great Massachusetts liberal political/media machine.

Frank Phillips wrote a perfectly good piece in the Globe the other day, pointing out that as Deval Patrick's campaign steps up its attempts to portray Charlie Baker as an insurance-industry corporate hack, one could legitimately say, in the sandbox of politics, that Baker is rubber and Patrick is glue, and if one's a hack then the other's a bigger one.

So alleged comedian Lenny Clarke, who last I saw ranting as MC at a Charlie Baker rally, got caught the other day joking to a Craig Spadafora fundraiser crowd that Spadafora's Democratic opponent for state senator, state representative and Katherine Clark, is a whore. The joke, I am led to understand, went something like this: "Katherine Clark is my aunt, and a whore.

As you probably are aware, you can freely drive all around New England without fear of wandering into a Republican congressman's district. As you probably also know, something ranging from a Republican ripple to a tsunami is coming November 2.

And yet....

Both of Maine's congressional seats appear to be staying safely blue, according to recent polls.